


sometimes I think I see your ghost (in passing hallways, the staircase to my apartment)

by heartshapedcandy



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:08:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27725288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcandy/pseuds/heartshapedcandy
Summary: a series of domestic vignettes as jamie and dani settle into life after Bly.**There is still the phantom catch of water in her lungs, still faces forming in the shadows of the room at her peripherals; ghosts there, waiting with grasping hands – but the inevitably of capture feels impossible in light of Jamie’s certainty. Jamie who, after stepping through the doorway, knows without looking that Dani will follow.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 39
Kudos: 273





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> if ur looking for a good time, check out this amazing art by [@mataurin](https://mataurin.tumblr.com/) loosely based on this piece [here](https://mataurin.tumblr.com/post/635373919648579584/loosely-based-on-nevervalentines-short-fics-on).

On the nights she can’t sleep, Dani finds her way to the kitchen. 

They’ve only been in the rental for a few months, but she already knows the shape of it in the dark. The nightmares rouse her from her sleep about two or three times a week, and with Jamie beside her, it gets harder and harder to drag herself out of bed.

But if she stays, she’s liable to slip back into the dreams – the waking terrors that make shapes out of the shadow of the doorframe, that coax faces from the scritch of branches against the window pane. She swears, one night, that she sees the Lady at the foot of her bed and doesn’t sleep right for days.

Dani makes it through the hallway without casualty, but jolts her hip on the mid-century modern sideboard in the foyer with a muffled curse. The rental is a tiny, one-story cottage outside of Montpelier, with a postage stamp backyard and screened in front porch that Jamie is already over-filling with potted plants and flower boxes.

Dani keeps reminding her not to get settled, that they might leave soon, might not be there for long, and Jamie gives her that fond, squinted look she often does, ducks in for a kiss rather than reply.

The former tenant of the cottage leaned hard into late-70s interior design, with garish wooden paneling and plush, sepia-toned rugs. Dani mutes the art-deco color blocks of linoleum in the kitchen with only the watery light above the stove, and puts the kettle on in the half-dark.

Already, staring hard at the red flare of the burner, she can’t remember the dream that woke her. Just the muddled shape of it, the discomfort and anxiety steeping in her chest, a dark rot that threatens to blacken her from the inside out.

She preps the tea in a ceramic pot on the stove, the loose-leaf blend that Jamie prefers, then milk, sugar, enough that she can feel the ghost of Jamie’s wince from three rooms away.

Slumping over the tiny table in the kitchenette, the mug warms her palms, soothing away the late-fall chill, sweatpants settling low on her hips.

She doesn’t hear Jamie until she is already behind her, the shush of her footsteps, a warm hand on the back of her neck.

“Okay, sweetheart?”

Startling, Dani turns into her touch, soothed to find Jamie looking grumpy and bed-rumpled, dark curls a mess, sleeves of an overlong flannel slipping down her wrists.

 _Sweetheart_ is the sleepiest of Jamie’s affections, with _Poppins_ reserved for daylight and teasing, and _baby_ for when Dani is sad, for wiping tears off her chin or tucking her against her shoulder. Most times, there are no pet name at all, just a brusque tone and a hand on her cheek.

Sometimes, to take the piss, Jamie calls her _Danielle_ and mimics her American accent, words flattened and elongated enough to make Dani scowl. But _sweetheart_ is for the kitchen, for kettle warmed fingers and cold tiles.

“You didn’t have to get up,” Dani says. She reaches for Jamie’s hand, brings it to her mouth and brushes a kiss over her knuckles. “I’m fine.”

“Couldn’t sleep anyway,” Jamie says. A lie, but the harmless kind. The things she says to put Dani at ease. “Bed was too still without all your tossing and turning.”

“There’s tea,” Dani says, “If you want some.”

Jamie approaches the stove wearily, and Dani gets up to follow, fetches a mug from the shelf over the spice rack.

“I don’t think,” Jamie says carefully, “that you would ever intentionally hurt me.” She squints skeptically at the pot. “But mistakes do happen.”

“Baby,” Dani says, stuck between laughter and a pouting, little-kid-petulance, “it isn’t going to kill you.”

She steps closer until their hips bump, taking Jamie’s sleeve between a thumb and two fingers and ducking in.

“Aren’t I getting better? I feel like all the practice we’ve been doing,” she lingers on the words, noses at Jamie’s cheek, talks like this might not be about tea, after all, “I think I’m really learning a lot.”

Tucking her lips into her mouth, Jamie disguises a smile, eyes hooded. “It has been a very educational few months, I’ll give you that.”

Dani buries her face in Jamie’s neck to hide a blush and camps out there for a while, just because.

Blanket-warm and sleepy, Jamie still smells like the sheets on their bed, like detergent and soft cotton, the milky skin under her jaw holds a trace of perfume. Dani purses her lips in a quiet just-because kiss against her throat, then another, open mouth, humid breath.

Jamie worms in closer, hips butting, reaching around Dani to take the ceramic mug from her hands and rest it on the stovetop.

“Careful, there,” she says. “You’re going to wake me up for good if you keep that up.”

Dani nods into her neck, accepts an arm around her waist, curls her fingers in the front of Jamie’s flannel. “I’m not going back to sleep, anyway.”

A hum of concern. “Bad dreams again?”

“Always.” This mumbled, grumpily, and Jamie pulls back to pet her fringe out of her eyes.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” Dani leans harder into the touch, proffers her cheek for a kiss. Jamie obediently obliges, before pushing her away to continue preparing her tea, nudging Dani back toward the bench seat of the table.

Closing her eyes, the clink of the spoon against the lip of the mug is familiar. So is the sound of Jamie turning off the stove, the hiss-spit as the gas clicks off. Jamie settles at the bench across from her, sets her chin in her palm.

“Think I’m going to pick up groceries in the morning, if you want to come,” Jamie says.

Dani opens her eyes, watches Jamie watch her, and realizes, all at once, how perfectly settled she feels. Grounded, for the first time in years, maybe ever. With a flicker of embarrassment, she realizes that the thought of going to the shop with Jamie _does_ actually excite her – hands knocking between them as Jamie stands for far too long in front of the water-misted produce, a kiss stolen in the narrow aisles of canned goods, cold-cut sandwiches picked up from the deli window next to the butcher.

It’s sickeningly domestic, and perfect, and awful. Jamie looks at her steadily, and Dani looks back.

“I really, really like you,” Dani says, a little woozy. Sleep deprived, and drowsy, the stove still radiating a steady heat, and Jamie looking at her like _that_ – all soft eyes, cupped chin, bare feet knocking under the kitchen table.

Jamie smiles, a little flushed, pleased. “Is that a yes to groceries, then?”

“Definitely a yes.” Dani reaches for her, and Jamie takes her hand, plays a thumb across her palm, stroking gentle over her love line.

Dani wants to say: I didn’t think I could ever have this.

Wants to say: I never thought sitting across from someone at 3 a.m. watching them drink the shitty tea that I made in a pair of shorts I’m pretty sure are mine could make my entire body feel like melted butter, that I could feel pleasure just from the way you touch me, that I would stand in an endless line at a crowded supermarket every Sunday morning if you were in front of me in high-waisted blue jeans picking out a chocolate bar for us to share on the ride home.

Instead she says: “If we have time, we could go to the farmer’s market after? Get those apples you like?”

Jamie answers her with a kiss. Leans across the table and catches her mouth messily, jarring Dani’s mug of tea and sending the lukewarm liquid sloshing. She pulls away laughing, rubs at her own mouth like she’s embarrassed.

“Yeah, Poppins, I figure we can fit that in.”

***

After the store and the market and a meandering drive home – one where Dani spends too long groping at Jamie’s thigh at every stop sign until she gets batted away – they find an autumnal patch of sunlight on the porch and drag the wicker chairs to meet it. Every hour, as the sunlight shifts, Jamie makes a show of moving the chairs a few inches to the left, often with Dani still in hers, giggling as Jamie groans the whole time.

There is a paper bag of apples at their feet, Honeycrisp and McIntosh, more than they could ever readily eat, though Dani promises, absently, to make a pie. Jamie will swear Dani was conned into it by the pretty girl at the apple stand, and Dani laughs, genuine and loud, like she could have eyes for anyone but her.

“Yeah, but we all know pretty girls have always been your weakness,” Jamie says. She inspects the apples for bruises and chooses one carefully, like the decision could determine the entire fate of their afternoon. “I mean –” she gestures at herself, buffs the apple on her knit sweater, “look at me.”

“Oh, modest,” Dani laughs, inching her chair closer to pinch at her arm. “I wasn’t even—”

“You _were_ most certainly flirting.” She reaches for a paring knife resting on the window sill beside them and peels away a long stripe of the apple’s skin, mottled red and green, tossing it into a separate pile for composting. “Don’t think I didn’t hear you, all ‘oh, yes whatever you say, miss, I mean you _are_ the expert, and so good with your hands, too.’”

At this she drops into an awful approximation of Dani’s midwestern accent, seeming to derive great pleasure in doing so, payback for Dani’s even worse British one, hardly making it through the sentence before she starts to laugh.

“I absolutely did not say that,” Dani says, fully affronted now. “And I definitely don’t sound like that.”

Jamie swivels in her seat to face her, grinning, all-together too pleased with herself, speaking around a mouthful of muffled laughter and a slice of apple.

“I took some creative liberties,” Jamie says. “I have every right to, anyhow. I mean you _did_ travel across the ocean with the first pretty girl you saw.”

“Not the first. And can you blame me?” Dani asks, a little quieter, tilting her head to meet Jamie’s eyes full-on. Her words are more weighted than she means them to be, because that’s the thing isn’t it – that it isn’t just any girl, that it’s _Jamie_ , her Jamie, and – “I’d do it again. Travel across oceans, I mean. For you.”

Two points of color rise in Jamie’s cheeks, and she ducks her chin into the lip of her sweater, hiding from Dani’s eyes for a second.

“Christ, Dani,” she says, emerging. “Didn’t have to go full romantic on me.”

“I wasn’t flirting with the apple girl, anyhow,” Dani says, biting hard at her lip. “I just know you like the apples, so.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, eyes dropping somewhere low on Dani’s face. “They’re my favorite.”

Taking the knife to the fruit, she carves away a bite of tender, white flesh, holds it out for Dani to take. Dani opens her mouth, and Jamie’s eyes narrow, lips parting. She feeds it to her slowly, Dani’s teeth scraping against her fingers, a hint of tongue.

It’s ripe, tart, pared perfectly with the sawdust-sunlight clinging to the porch, to Jamie’s fingers lingering on her lips, to the rest of the afternoon stretching ahead of them, and maybe a few more after that.

“You didn’t sleep too well last night, did you?” Jamie asks, clearing her throat.

Confused, Dani wrinkles her forehead. “No, but, I mean, you knew that.”

“Right, well.” A shrug. “I just figured you must be tired, we could get a head start on it, then. Head to bed now, maybe. If you wanted.”

“Oh.” Eyebrows jumping, Dani feels the thrill of it, down to her fingertips, tilts her head to check the kitchen clock through the open doorway. “It’s 3 p.m., how ever will we fill the time?”

“I can think of a few things.” Already, Jamie is moving to her feet, reaching out a hand for Dani to take. Her fingers are sticky with juice from the apple, her cheeks still a little flushed, hair falling wild out of its haphazard ponytail.

Dani thinks about taking the fingers to her mouth, again, thinks about all the things that can fill a Sunday afternoon when you have nowhere else to be. Leaving the bag of apples behind them, it’s Dani who leads the way inside.

Laughing, Jamie hurries to catch up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally getting around to crossposting these from my tumblr [@nevervalentines](https://nevervalentines.tumblr.com/). it's been two months and i'll still cry if u talk to me about romantic symbolism in gothic lit, so why stop now.


	2. chapter two

Some nights are worse than others.

Logically, Dani knows that she fell asleep in her bed. Jamie had gone to sleep before her, but she’d stayed up late, sifting through boxes they had dragged out of the attic that morning.

The old tenant – who Jamie and Dani have started just affectionately referring to as _Agnes_ , inventing convoluted backstories when they get bored – had left crates of her castaways in the crawlspace behind the bedroom, in the attic hatch at the top of the stairs, and their landlord promised a break on the rent if they sorted through it for him.

Dani doesn’t mind. Jamie’s been working steadily on some sort of project, eyes bright in that way Dani knows, even now, means she’ll tell her when she’s ready – but she has a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the storefront that emptied out on Main Street a few weeks before.

She needs something to fill her days beyond worry, beyond avoiding her own reflection, a habit she feels she only had the luxury of a few days without. It’s not as bad now, not with Jamie beside her, but the prickling unease creeps up at night, a feeling like being watched, one that burns when the candlelight doesn’t.

She’d found a dusty cardboard box of beaten, well-loved paperbacks among the junk in the attic, and laid them out on the living room rug carefully, paging through the broken spines, earmarking a few to send to Miles and Flora for when they’re older, setting aside others that she can imagine Jamie nose deep in on the porch in jean shorts and a too-tiny tank top.

She’d crawled into bed sometime around midnight, and Jamie, half-asleep, had immediately turned into her warmth, burying her face in her chest, arm snaking around her waist.

Sleep had almost come easy, tangled in a soft quilt and Jamie’s long, bare legs, but now –

Water fills her mouth, her eyes, her nose. Dani can feel the pressure deep in her ears, like she is 12-years-old again, chasing neighbors to the bottom of the in-ground pool in Edmund’s back yard, daring each other to stay down the longest, until lungs were fit to bursting, and eardrums throbbed with the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Then, it was as simple as pushing off the cool, tile bottom, straining for watery sunlight and that first, ecstatic gasping inhale. Now, there is no relief.

Dani wakes up drowning.

It’s Jamie that seems to save her. She hears the repetition of her name, a worried hum in the back of a throat, then a warm hand cupping her neck, her cheek, stroking gentle over her forehead.

“Dani, baby, it’s okay.” The hands help her sit up, a body curls around her back. “Just a dream, sweetheart. Just a dream. I’m right here. Breathe, Dani, breathe.”

She opens her eyes and it’s like she can see Jamie from a great distance, through the water. Her eyes are wild, she looks older somehow. She is screaming.

They are both screaming.

When she finally wrenches free from the nightmare, she is sweat-drenched and trembling. Jamie, her Jamie, is holding her tight against her chest, smoothing back Dani’s matted bangs and murmuring nonsense against her temple.

Gasping, Dani thinks she might cry, and realizes her cheeks are already wet. She turns her head to find Jamie’s wide, worried eyes.

“There you are,” Jamie says. She exhales, shaky. “That was a bad one, huh?”

Dani nods, chokes around her own voice until she manages the two-syllable break of Jamie’s name.

Soothing, Jamie cradles her closer, turns a kiss into the apple of her cheek, rubs her nose against her temple. In the sling of her hips, the warm-soft-damp of the inside of bare thighs holds Dani close, and that grounds her as much as anything – to be held, to have no one at her back but someone she trusts completely.

“Jamie,” this again, lips tucked into her mouth, a little embarrassed now. “I’m so sorry –”

Jamie clicks her tongue, chiding. “Don’t apologize.” She shifts out from under Dani’s weight, slides to the end of the bed. “I was just thinking I’d gotten my eight hours, anyway.”

Eyes cast to the bedside, Dani can see the neon digits of the alarm clock only advertise 4:30 a.m., but she doesn’t correct her, just reaches for her, a little put out that Jamie has already moved away.

“Alright, clingy, let me just get you a fresh shirt.”

Dani manages a laugh, a little tear-soaked, and sniffles. “I’m so sweaty.”

Rummaging through the top drawer of their armoire, Jamie turns to her curiously. “Like you’ve jumped in a pool. Someone tell your body it’s October, it’s well freezing in here.”

She tosses a t-shirt toward the bed, and Dani recognizes it as one of Jamie’s – black, with a scratchy decal boasting Blondie’s 1977 tour circuit. Despite the lingering sour of the dream, she feels a pulse of pleasure that Jamie would choose one of her own shirts to outfit her in. The smell alone is comforting, even though their laundry loads have long mixed, the fabric still holds something of Jamie about it.

She peels off her own shirt, skin bare underneath, and can practically hear the Looney Tune-esque _sproing_ as Jamie’s eyes narrow in on – and instantly avert away from – her chest. It makes her giggle around another sniff, and she preens a little bit, ruffles one hand through her hair while shaking out the fresh shirt.

Jamie stops pretending not to look, wobbles a step closer instead.

“No fair,” she says, lowly. “You’re in a vulnerable state, stop showing off.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Dani says, though, yeah, maybe she is a little bit. It’s new, this – that thing where watching someone else be turned on by her also kind of gets her off. That even in the near-black of their bedroom, lit only by the glow of the clock and muted streetlights, her naked chest is enough to give Jamie that dizzy, milk-drunk kind of look.

She pulls the shirt over her head, snuggles into the fabric, dipping her nose into the collar for a whiff of detergent.

“Back to bed?” she asks, though her voice sounds unconvincing, even to her.

Skeptical, Jamie steps closer, lays a hand on her knee. “Could you sleep?”

“Probably not,” Dani admits. Shrugs. “I might just go lay down on the couch. I don’t want to keep you up.”

Jamie is already heading out of the room, looking back at Dani like she’s confused why she isn’t following.

“We’ll put something on,” she says. Holds out a hand, and says, awfully, terribly, like it’s common sense, like there’s no other option, “you aren’t waiting up on your own.”

There is still the phantom catch of water in her lungs, still faces forming in the shadows of the room at her peripherals; ghosts there, waiting with grasping hands – but the inevitably of capture feels impossible in light of Jamie’s certainty. Jamie who, after stepping through the doorway, knows without looking that Dani will follow.

**

The worst nights, the nights like these, when the Beast presses like a headache, they pop an old VHS tape into the VCR and Jamie tucks behind her on the living room couch. The blue wash from the portly, pot-bellied television set and the whir-click-hiss of the VHS unspooling triggers a placebo of near-instant calm.

The VHS tapes are also a gift from dear (likely departed) Agnes. A painstakingly catalogued box of taped _Happy Days_ reruns, with careful handwriting detailing the original airdate, and the episode range on the cassette. Inexplicably the thirteenth episode of every season is missing. Entire nights have been spent arguing the logic of it to no avail.

Like she does every time, Dani compliments (presumably) Agnes’s organization. “Really did us a favor, huh?” she says, sinking back into Jamie’s arms, accepting a kiss against her cheek before wriggling closer.

“Is it a favor?” Jamie asks, a little snarky, nudging her hips against Dani’s, pinned between her and the back of the couch. “Or is this some sort of purgatory? Am I due to spend the rest of my life watching _Happy Days_ reruns before daybreak with my sweaty girlfriend?”

“Hey!” It’s a difficult angle, but Dani tries to swat at Jamie anyway. Jamie just holds her tighter, buries a laugh at the nape of Dani’s neck, then a kiss.

“I’m not sweaty,” Dani says, a beat, “anymore. And we both know hell isn’t a 70s sitcom.”

Internally, the word _girlfriend_ is spiraling through her head in a frenzied whirr. Forbidden. Delicious.

Jamie grants her another kiss, this one just under her jaw. “It better not be.”

The drone of the television in the background is enough to scare the shadows away, and Jamie drags a knit throw over the both of them, hooks her chin over her shoulder, one hand playing at the drawstring of Dani’s sweatpants. They’re lazy enough, sleepy enough, that they don’t even bother to fast forward through the commercials, just let the tape run through seven-year-old advertisements for Kellogg’s cereal and sugar-free JELL-O.

The world narrows to this sliver of couch, to Jamie stroking low on her stomach, a hand slipped up under her shirt now, unrushed, nearly unintentional. She traces shapes on the soft of Dani’s belly, inches up toward Dani’s breast like she’s considering, before running her nails gently back down.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Dani says, voice slurred with almost-sleep, spooning back into Jamie’s hips until she hears her hiss.

“Who said anything about finishing?” Jamie murmurs. Teeth at the lobe of Dani’s ear, nosing into skin. The click of mouth on the metal stud of Dani’s earing, breath warm. “I could do this all night.”

Eventually, she’ll take pity, tune out the laugh track, slip her hand under the band of Dani’s sweats, mouthing at her neck until the Lady is the last thing on Dani’s mind.

Credits roll, the tape clunks to an anticlimactic finish, and the blue screen washes them, static crackling in fizzing threads.

“I change my mind,” Jamie groans. Dani turns in her arms, reaching for her wrist, digging nails in until Jamie curls two fingers inside her, swallowing her gasps, “If this is purgatory, I think I’ll stay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't think about vhs tapes without thinking about my brother and i, as children, becoming so emotionally distraught by "the tigger movie" that we buried it in secret at the bottom of the garbage can and it was never seen again. bly manor is that for me now, but 20 years later and with lesbians. as always, find me on tumblr [@nevervalentines](https://nevervalentines.tumblr.com/)


	3. chapter three

Dani is purportedly doing the dishes, but she’s been scrubbing futile circles on the same dish for about two minutes now, her attention focused out the window over the kitchen sink where Jamie is kneeling in the garden, wiping sweat off her forehead with the back of her wrist.

It’s almost November, and before living with Jamie, Dani had been of the understanding that all plants were dead by now. She figured gardening was something that packed up in early October, took a snooze and returned with a vengeance when spring did.

But Jamie had introduced her to the horrifying notion of cold-weather plants, and lawn maintenance, and lovingly clipping back the boxwoods that had begun to grow up against the lattice of the porch, all coil and clinging Kraken-like growth.

Fall lipped at the cool Vermont mornings and forced a gloomy dusk by 5:30, but by noon most days sunlight made a watery attempt to warm the paltry postage stamp of the backyard and Jamie – painfully, inexplicably, tortuously – managed to work up a sweat even in the slight chill, shedding her outer layer until she was bent over in just shirt sleeves and baggy, mud-streaked jeans.

It must be an English thing – that even when Dani shivered in thick sweaters, Jamie seemed perfectly content in grungy overalls and wool socks.

It was, all things considered, pretty unfair. And today especially, with sunshine blooming over the wood-slatted fence, a glaring heat-haze that warmed the tiny house in patches of sunlight, Jamie had taken it a step further, a nymph-like vision in a cropped tee and pants rolled to her calves.

She was bent over the turned earth of the small vegetable garden, patting dark soil over the roots of textured, leafy greens she promises will be edible in a few weeks, armed with a trowel and the garden hose, clippers shoved in her back pocket.

Pausing, she shields her eyes and looks up, searching, casts her gaze toward the house. Dani fumbles the soap-slippery dish into the sink, curses, stopping the flow of the faucet with her forearm as she feels the ceramic for cracks. The clatter, even from inside, is enough to alert Jamie of her audience. She squints toward the kitchen window and catches Dani’s eyes through the glass, grins – all dimples and teeth, offers a two-finger salute.

Dani feels her cheeks flush and looks back at the sink, studiously, like she wasn’t already watching, like she hasn’t been for the past thirty minutes, puttering around the kitchen and looking for an excuse to go outside. Soapy water spirals down the drain, and she towels the dish off and then her hands, fitting the dish into the drying rack carefully.

It was just that she had promised herself she would let Jamie have this space – allow her a Saturday afternoon where they attended to their separate agendas. Just because they happened to live together and just because they _could_ be touching each other all the time, and just because she _wanted_ to didn’t mean she _had_ to be.

She was a grown adult. She could stand an afternoon inside, and the dishes had been stacking up in the sink, anyway, and there was a veritable tower of library books on the coffee table, paperback novels she had been meaning to get to for ages.

Outside the window, Jamie settles back onto her thighs and sinks the trowel into the soft earth, blade first. She lifts the hemline of her shirt to mop at her brow, and for a moment, the bare skin of her stomach, the dip of her abdomen and the V of her hips is desperately, awfully visible. Dani’s mouth drops open and if she still had a plate in her hands, she would have dropped that, too.

She moves away from the window before she makes another afternoon-wasting decision, the kind that halts productivity and leaves Norton Juster’s 1961 children’s novel, _The Phantom Tollbooth,_ untouched on the table. She wants to reread it one last time before she sends it forward to Miles. The book’s protagonist, Milo, reminds her so much of him, and it feels even more fitting that this touch-worn copy, a paperback so well-loved the cover feels as soft as beaten leather, was rescued from Agnes’s possessions.

A little of the old and well-traveled, to keep him and Flora company in their new home.

She leans heavily against the fridge and checks her watch – considers putting in a load of laundry, or paging through the classifieds in today’s paper.

There are still a few boxes of Agnes’s crowding the hall outside the bedroom, and she’s meant to sort through it for days now. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and Jamie is distracted with yardwork, and there is so much to be done.

But –

The squeaky hinge of the porch screen door alerts Jamie to her presence before she can make herself known, and Jamie turns at the noise, smiles when she sees her coming down the steps.

“Hey you.” She wrinkles her nose, directs the next to the door – “I really should fix that.” Then, like she’s just processing it, eyes back on Dani – “I thought you were going to get some reading done.”

Dani tucks her lips into her mouth, hefts the open beer bottle in her hand like an excuse. “I am. I just thought you might be thirsty.”

Tongue between her teeth, Jamie’s smile grows. “Oh, yeah? Is that also why you were watching me through the window?” She cocks her head, brushes dirt off the heels of her palms, “concerned for my health, were you?”

“Shut up,” this mumbled. Dani rubs her thumb through the condensation on the amber glass, scratches at the label. “Do you want it or not?”

“You know I do.” Jamie rises to her heels, and extends her arm, accepting the drink gratefully. If their fingers brush in the hand-off, Jamie says nothing about it, but her eyes soften, crinkling at the corners. “Thank you, baby.”

The _baby_ is quieter than the rest of her words – conscious of the neighbor’s yard, pressed tightly to their own. Even here, a town with a little more give than most, it’s best not to draw more attention than is necessary to two women living alone, especially with neighbors who, despite good intentions, have a suburban-bred propensity for gossip.

She takes a long pull from the drink and sighs, lashes fluttering. “If you’re taking a break, do you want to keep me company for a while?”

The invitation strikes Dani squarely in the chest, a surge of fondness so keen, she thinks her cheeks flush. Without expectation, Jamie is still kneeling, looking up at her, a little hopeful, eyebrows cinches.

Dani sighs, happily. “I would love to.”

Aside from the dormant flower beds, and a scraggly tree that Jamie swears up-and-down will produce pears in the summer, the yard is mostly bare, but they’ve decorated with sparse, mismatched patio furniture rescued from street curbs and yard sales, and Dani sinks into one of the chairs, props her elbows onto the metal, circular table.

A chunky transistor radio lists on its surface, another gift from Agnes, and the Ronettes’ harmonize through a static-fuzzed oldies station.

“The garden looks good,” Dani says. She accepts the beer bottle back from Jamie who has risen to her feet now, steals a sip, aligning her lips with the petal-print left from Jamie’s own mouth.

“Yeah?” Jamie turns to regard her own handiwork, pleased. “I think it’s coming along.”

“You look good, too” Dani says, not quite able to help herself, and Jamie turns to her in that half-caught kind of way, eyes slitting with curious pleasure, her pretty, fairytale mouth pursing to hide a smile.

“Is the dirt and grime working for you, then?”

Dani scoffs. “Like you don’t know it. Swaggering around Bly like you didn’t know I was watching.”

And that – that’s new. Talking about Bly, a topic carefully avoided for the first few months, like they were worried any mention of it would bring the memories reeling back, an unwelcome visitor, tapping on their front door with tree-branch fingers, hands cupped around an eyeless face to peer into the darkened windows of their newly-settled home.

But Bly is complicated and sprawling and illogical, even an ocean away. For all it took, it gave her this, gave Dani _her_ – Jamie who is tossing her hair out of her eyes because she didn’t think to pull it back this morning, whose hands are set on her hips, who is looking at Dani with half a protest forming on her lips.

“I _didn’t_ know you were watching,” she says. At Dani’s skeptical glance, she amends. “Okay, fine – at first, I didn’t know you were watching.” She busts into laughter, fond and loud. “It’s not like you were subtle. Staring at me and dropping dishes.” She taps her lips with a finger. “Oh, wait –”

Dani makes like she’s about to get up, pushing at the arms of the chair in a fake-huff. Jamie moves to stop her, grabbing at her forearms with teasing hands, pressing a touch like a kiss into the warm skin of her wrists.

“I’m teasing, I’m teasing.” She squeezes her arms, gentle, dips a bit and wavers, like she wants to kiss her even though she shouldn’t. “It wasn’t like I wasn’t watching you, too.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dani hums, suddenly shy, presses up into Jamie’s touch. “For how long? Since we first met in the kitchen?”

Jamie clicks her tongue and steps back, toeing at a tuft of grass, chin dipping down. It takes Dani a moment to realize she’s embarrassed.

“Since before that,” Jamie says, shrugs. “Saw you stomping around my gardens. All puffed chest and fearless. But, well, you didn’t step in the flower beds, so.”

Dani laughs, helpless, reaches out to hook a finger in one of Jamie’s belt loops, just for the tether. “You wanted to sleep with me because I didn’t step on your flowers.”

Shrugging, Jamie closes her eyes. “I wanted to know you.” She squints an eye open, bites her lip. “The sleeping with part came later. When I got close enough to see that pretty face.”

“Oh my God.” Dani laughs again, louder this time, shoves at her hip. “Enough of you. Go back to work.”

“As you command.” Jamie takes a few steps back toward her trowel, the garden coiled in the grass, a bucket of compost beside. She turns to look at Dani before she gets too far, pinches her mouth to the side. “Why don’t you read out here? Just for a little while, if you’d like?”

Dani feels that thing they haven’t talked about yet, that awful, perfect too-full thing, her heart stuttering in her chest, a two-count beat to the tune of Ronnie Spector’s radio croon, and nods, breathless.

“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

**

Dani’s been turning the pages of her novel for a quarter of an hour, but her attention flits around the page like a flighty bird, unable to find a perch on the solid blocks of text, on the winding route of Miles’s tiny, electric car, as his carelessness carries him deeper and deeper into the Doldrums.

Though it’s a story she has read dozens of times – many of them to flocks of rapt, cross-legged fourth graders, crowded close on a threadbare classroom carpet – she finds it hard to concentrate. What with Jamie mere feet away, kneeling over the dark, tilled furrows, burying her fingers up to the knuckles, ostensibly checking the soil quality, the wetness of the earth.

Muscles in her forearms flex, the lines of them stark and strong below the cuffs of her shirt, her fingernails collecting dirt that Dani will make her scrub away before dinner. The knees of her jeans are damp from the garden hose, the denim grass stained from the duress of an afternoon spent kneeling and standing, spent sending smiles to Dani over her shoulder, looking peach-pleased and flushed that Dani is there to keep her company at all.

Fingers curl into the spine of the novel, holding her place, and Dani brushes her bangs out of her eyes, tilts back into her chair, gives into the temptation of being the audience for a while.

Jamie is stooped over a newly-replanted rose bush, thumbing at the leaves, checking for any unwanted insects, for mottled coloring or withering branches. She runs her fingers along waxy leaves with a tenderness otherwise reserved for Dani’s skin, and even from here Dani can imagine the imprint of that same touch on her cheek, along the curve of her bottom lip.

And what is love but voyeurism, of Jamie knowing she is watching and not minding, the performance of existing in the same spaces as the people you have given permission to share them with, to watch without reticence.

Dani grabs for the beer and slugs hard from the bottle, resists the temptation to call Jamie back over, to call her inside.

Reaching into her back pocket, Jamie removes the clippers, and bends close to the thorny branches, cutting back a stem whose bud is tightly furled and browning. Face tilted up into the sun, Jamie seems to only be paying her chore half-a-mind, the rest of her seeking out the shifting sunlight, chasing the fall of it as clouds pass overhead, or dissipate into thinning tendrils.

After days like this, Jamie’s skin always seems to hold the heat, and Dani will find it later in bed, soaked into the crook of her neck and knees, places she can kiss while Jamie squirms, complaining of being ticklish, pretending not to enjoy the attention.

People don’t talk enough about that knowing, about the moments after sex when Dani has permission to touch wherever she wants – the warm flush of skin-on-skin, of Jamie still wet against her thigh.

Finally, Jamie seems to notice the weight of her stare and turns. Dani doesn’t know what she sees when she looks at her, but it’s enough that she begins to say something, interrupted by a sudden yelp of pain. She drops the clippers and curses, withdraws her hand from the rose bush like she’s been burned.

Dani rushes out of her chair, seized with panic even as she knows it’s an overreaction. In her hurry she nearly tips the patio table, and succeeds in sloshing the rest of the beer down the front of her sweater.

“Are you alright?” She drops to her knees in the wet grass, thoughtless of the knees of her corduroys, reaching an arm out for Jamie, desperate to touch, to hold.

Jamie is cradling her hand to her chest, the tips of her ears pinking, looking an endearing cocktail of amused and mortified.

“Just pricked myself, is all.” She surveys the damage, blood welling from a parallel track of scratches down her palm. “That’s what I get for mooning after you like an idiot.”

Swatting away her uninjured hand, Dani takes Jamie’s wrist gingerly in her grasp, brings her palm close to examine the cuts, stuck between fawning and scolding.

“If you just wore the gloves I bought you, this might not have happened,” she says.

Her voice sounds a little brittle even to her own ears, heart still racing in her chest. After Edmund, after Bly, after everything, her body seems eager to catastrophize, like the grooves of panic are still worn deep, even after months of relative calm.

“Hey,” Jamie whines, submitting to Dani’s careful prodding, “I’m injured here.” She pouts, worming closer to Dani’s chest, the two of them kneeling in an ungraceful heap in the lawn. “Could have lost a finger.” Here, her eyes narrow, thoughtful. “Course, that might have been worse for you, in the long run.”

The laugh bubbles, unexpected, from Dani’s chest. “ _Jamie_ , oh my God.”

Visibly pleased at earning a laugh, Jamie tilts her head close until their foreheads knock, concealing the motion in the guise of studying her own palm. Beneath the levity, Jamie seems to sense the surprise of it had startled Dani more than she is letting on, and she lets her free hand fall to Dani’s knee, soothing a touch there, gentling and warm.

“It’s all good, really.” She looks up, and her face is suddenly _so_ close, all wide, doe-eyes and that curious, upturned mouth. “I’ve done worse trying to get out of bed in the morning. It’s just a scratch.” Head tilting, she shrugs, examines Dani coyly. “A kiss might help, though.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Dani mumbles, but she’s considering it, if not for the omnipresent threat of Mrs. Dupree next door, who all but watches the neighborhood going-ons with binoculars.

Kissing in the backyard would be bold, even for them, and she distracts herself with a newfound preoccupation with the dampness of her sweater, remembers the beer spilled over her front.

She frowns down at the stain. “Look what you’ve done.”

Jamie grins, drags her hand up from Dani’s knee to pluck at the hem of Dani’s sweater. “You can just take it off, then.”

“Oh, the neighbors will love that,” Dani says. Lowers her voice and casts a sidelong glance at the fence cordoning off the yard. “Mrs. Dupree would really enjoy a show of public nudity.”

“Y’know,” Jamie says thoughtfully, “she honestly just might.”

Huffing another laugh, Dani reroutes her attention to Jamie’s palm, where the thorns have bit deep, the skin swollen and reddening around the scratches. Jamie sits, patiently, gives no sign of pain, but Dani expresses it enough for the both of them – hissing through her teeth with sympathy, pouting, a little futilely, at the bush behind them.

“I’m sorry,” she says, not even fully aware of the words coming out of her mouth. Ghosts a touch over the plush heel of Jamie’s palm. “Ouch.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Jamie says, laughing a little. “Dani, it’s alright. Let me finish up here, and then I’ll patch it up inside.”

“Finish up _here_?” Dani says, like every syllable had personally insulted her mother and stolen the good silver from the drawer. “I don’t think so. Come inside now, and I’ll take care of it.”

“Jesus.” If Jamie starts to protest, a look from Dani mollifies her, and she clambers to her feet quietly, trails Dani inside, still looking a little embarrassed by the whole thing. Her shoulders relax, though, to pass from the chilled outdoors to the warm, pillowy air of the kitchen, which still smells like stale, burnt coffee from Dani’s attempt earlier that morning.

The house has a notoriously finnicky thermostat, and the boiler churns on in the basement, the pipes groaning in the walls. The rush of heated air and the weight of their hands in each other’s cocoons Dani in a syrupy warmth, soothing the last thrills of panic from her fingertips. She shoves Jamie into a kitchen chair and fumbles through the cabinets under the sink for a first aid kit, patting her sweater with a damp towel as she does.

Jamie watches, amused, hand held out in front of her. “Take much longer, and we’re going to have to amputate,” she says. Tilts her head to get a better look at Dani’s ass as she bends to rifle through the cabinet. “Actually, scratch that, take your time.” At Dani’s questioning look, she shrugs, “Nice view.”

“You’re impossible,” Dani says. But she tosses her hair over her shoulder, cheeks pinking. “Where did you put the first aid kit?”

“Bathroom, maybe?”

Dani returns with her hands full – a metal tin of Band-Aid bandages, a wad of gauze and a green-lidded bottle of Bactine. She sits beside Jamie; ignores the skeptical look she is afforded in the process.

“Dani, this really isn’t –”

“Hush.”

She cleans the cut gingerly, bending and folding Jamie’s fingers, stroking soft over the grooves of her knuckles. Jamie’s palms are calloused and rough, and Dani’s become so used to them in other contexts – of her long, careful fingers holding or grasping, of the rough-soft of her palm against her skin – that even like this, perfectly innocent, she feels a rush of longing well in her chest.

She blots the blood, checks to be sure no thorn is left hooked in the cut, and sprays the Bactine. Jamie winces, a subtle squint of eyes, a draw of teeth, but Dani notices, anyway. Frowning, she takes Jamie’s hand to her mouth and blows a steady stream of cool air to soothe the sting.

Jamie shifts in her chair, squeezes her thighs together. Clears her throat. Dani doesn’t seem to notice, focused on applying the Band-Aids and dropping a lingering kiss to Jamie’s palm. Jamie’s breath catches, and Dani presses another, this on her love line, nuzzles her face into the cup of Jamie’s fingers.

“Is that an essential part of the process, or?” Jamie’s asks, shifting her chair closer.

“Quiet,” Dani says, “it’s holistic.”

“If it’s health we’re thinking about, I really should get you out of those wet clothes,” Jamie says. She pushes out of her chair and straddles Dani’s lap instead. Smiling, head tilting back, Dani accepts the weight, curls her arms around Jamie’s back.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you watching me all day,” Jamie says. She wets her lips, swallows. “Have you been waiting for this?” 

Dani nods, head lolling. Body liquid with the flush of this victory, of Jamie smiling for her, because of her. 

Hands grasping at the back of Jamie’s shirt, she only eases up to let Jamie pull her sweater over her head, hands burning a trail up the bare skin of her sides until she can discard the sweater on the floor beside them, cup Dani’s jaw with two hands.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” she whispers, quiet. Rubs her thumb over the soft, velveteen skin under Dani’s eye.

It isn’t an admission, but it sounds like one, like the thing they haven’t said yet, and won’t for some time. Dani’s response is lost in the brush of Jamie’s mouth over her brow, then, encouraging Dani’s chin up, the apple of her cheek.

Her lips land at the corner of her mouth, drag to press, flush lip-on-lip, and finally, finally Jamie kisses her, proper. It unknots a strain in Dani’s chest, like an exhale, a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

Hands scramble to find purchase, settle somewhere under Jamie’s shirt, fingers splayed on her back. Sighing, she parts her lips, slips her tongue into Jamie’s mouth, hums as Jamie arches into her lap.

Fumbling between them, Jamie strokes two fingers over the snap of Dani’s corduroys, and Dani wrenches away, dazed.

“Your hand –” she says, watches Jamie’s eyes flutter open to regard her, fond and chasm-deep, looking and looking.

There’s a shrug, Jamie ducking close to smile against her mouth, pressing their bodies, flush. “I’ll work around it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not pictured here: the 150 words of gardening erotica as i tried to talk about jamie being knuckle-deep in the soil without getting carried away. find me on tumblr [@nevervalentines](https://nevervalentines.tumblr.com/)


	4. chapter four

She wasn’t drunk when she started, but that was two glasses of wine ago, before she had burnt the first sirloin, and before Jamie had called to tell her she would be late.

Of the two of them, Dani was the better cook, but this wasn’t accounting for a new recipe borrowed out of one of Agnes’s yellowed, cookbooks, dogeared and oil-spattered. This wasn’t accounting for the uneven burners on the ancient gas stove, for Jamie’s unexpected delay or for the cloudy, white wine induced fog that had descended on her quite suddenly, all things considered.

Making a simple pan sauce didn’t seem quite so hard on late night reruns when Julia Child was doing it, but searing off the meat was supposed to be the easy part, and here she was peering into the saucepan like she’s trying to read tea leaves at the bottom of a cup.

She’s so focused on browning the steak, she almost doesn’t hear the door unlock, but Jamie drops her bag with a clunk just over the threshold and Dani’s head swivels toward the kitchen door. Even without seeing her, Dani can picture the way Jamie will kick off her shoes, rifle a hand through her curls, toss her keys into the tiny, clay bowl sitting in the foyer.

There’s the pad of socked feet then, called from a few rooms away, “Is something burning, Dani?”

Two glasses of wine ago, that might not have stung. But now, armed with a wooden spoon and a little strung out from the alcohol-flush and the heat of the stove, it digs the knife a little deeper.

She clicks off the burner and turns just as Jamie graces the entryway, looking dashing and night-air ruffled, smelling a little like cigarette smoke, and a lot like the pub a few blocks away.

Jamie’s face breaks into a smile when she sees her, and even through her hurt, Dani finds herself a little enamored to see it. It dimples her cheeks in all the best ways, gives her chin that roguish, endearing tilt.

Her sleeves are pushed up above her elbows, a patchy, worn flannel sloppily tucked in, half-unbuttoned over one of her soft, thermal Henley’s that Dani loves so well.

Conversely, Dani thinks she must look something of a mess – nearly the suburban caricature she was always secretly terrified she would become:

Like the harried, half-forgotten wife, spending evenings in front of a stove, herding children and chores until a husband stumbles in at half past seven on their anniversary.

And it’s not that Jamie has ever made her feel like that, or meant to. They are equals in everything, and most nights, it’s Dani who urges them to go out more, drags them to movie showings or those cheesy neighborhood block parties every third Wednesday.

But like this, feeling frustrated and a little stood up, those fears creep in – like she’s back in the Midwest, watching a wedding day approach as the world moves in double-speed around her.

She can tell Jamie doesn’t know yet that she’s in trouble. If she did, she would have showed up sheepish, maybe armed with flowers, and wouldn’t have beelined across the kitchen for a kiss with so much confidence.

Dani turns her head at the last second, and Jamie’s mouth catches her nearly at her hairline, almost on her ear. Only does then does Jamie pull back to look at Dani, puzzled. Brow furrowed; her mouth pursed into a pout. Looking at her, Dani feels even more of her latent annoyance seeping away.

“What was that for?” Jamie asks. She reaches for Dani, fits two hands on her waist over the hemline of her skirt, tries to pull her to her.

Dani resists, and Jamie drops her hands, steps back.

Jamie looks around the kitchen, searching. Looking like she had showed up to a pop-quiz sans pencil, paper or even the faintest clue what class she was in.

“Is everything okay?”

“It’s –” Dani crosses her arms over her stomach, feels suddenly and terribly like she might cry. “I just – you’re late.”

“I’m late?” Jamie looks at Dani hard, then at the singed meat at the top of the garbage pail, the half empty bottle of wine on the counter. “Are you drunk?”

Dani shakes head her head. Reconsiders. Nods. “Only a little.”

“This is a bit of a fancy dinner you have in the works,” Jamie says. She tucks her bottom lip into her mouth. “Baby, I told you the guys wanted to buy me a drink after work and I could fend for myself, remember?”

Dani steels herself. Clears her throat.

“We had said we would celebrate the anniversary tonight.” She blurts it out, all at once, squeezes her eyes shut. “We talked about it last week, and I said I would make dinner and you said _that sounds great_ , and I said _great_ , and then I, well –”

She flaps her hand around the kitchen.

“I didn’t know how to remind you when you called without sounding,” her voice drops here, “well, nagging, I guess.”

Jamie’s eyes go wide, and the memory of the conversation seems to hit like a punch to the stomach.

“Oh, shit.” She brings a hand to her mouth, looking around at the kitchen with fresh eyes, the bunches of rosemary and thyme on the counter, the open cookbook. “Oh, _shit._ ”

“I should have said,” Dani says weakly. “It’s really not a big deal. I just thought you might remember.”

And it wasn’t a big deal, it really wasn’t. Wasn’t even a proper anniversary, just six months since they signed the lease on the rental, six months since they decided they might settle here for a while. Take it one day at a time, see what happened.

It’s not a big deal, it _can’t_ be. But, well, Dani wasn’t used to wanting to celebrate these sorts of things. Had used to feel a vague embarrassment every time Edmund insisted they celebrate a landmark. She cringed away from Valentine’s Days, and chocolates, and any sort of romantic gesture.

It had confused her to make such a show of the passage of time, really. Who wants an award for standing still?

But this – this had been different, somehow. And looking at the kitchen, knowing the dining table was set in the next room, made her feel flush and stupid. Christ, she had even lit a candle.

“I can just clean it up,” she said, watching Jamie’s face go through the five stages of grief at an astonishing speed. “We can just put a movie on.”

“Baby, baby, no.” Jamie reaches for her, and this time Dani lets her pull her into her arms, buries her face in Jamie’s shoulder. “This is my fault. I’m so sorry.” She chafes her hands at the back of Dani’s sweater, turns her cheek against her hair.

“With the store opening and everything, I completely just lost track of things.” She unearths Dani from her embrace to look her in the eyes, cheeks a little flush, mouth downturned. “That’s not okay.” A hand smooths Dani’s hair back from her face, thumbs at the corner of her mouth. “You are my first priority, always. I fucked up.”

“We just had opening day last week,” Dani says, sniffling a little, trying for a tremulous smile. “It’s so not a big deal. The shop – ”

“Fuck the shop,” Jamie says, cups her face in her hands.

This close, Dani can count her eyelashes. Having her in kissing distance always makes it hard to concentrate, and Jamie doesn’t help the issue, ducking in to press her lips at the corner of her mouth, like she’s making up for any earlier missed opportunities.

“I never would have gone to the pub if I remembered, you know that right?” She punctuates the question with another kiss, half on her chin. “I was jiggling my knee the whole time, just waiting until I could make an excuse to get back to you.”

Dani rocks to tiptoe, kisses her flush on the mouth, rocks back down.

“I didn’t even have a drink,” Jamie whispers, noses in. “But it seems like somebody had enough for both of us.”

“Only two glasses,” Dani mumbles. She turns her face into Jamie’s hand, presses a kiss to her palm.

“Why don’t I pour you another,” Jamie says, runs her eyes down Dani’s body like a touch, face sharp with interest, but a crease still disrupting her brow. “I would offer to finish up dinner, but neither of us want that.”

“Are you still hungry?”

“Randy’s shitty bar food has nothing on you,” Jamie says. Then, quickly, “Your cooking I mean.” The tips of her ears flush scarlet. “I know I’m not out of the doghouse yet.”

A laugh bubbles up from Dani’s chest, and she swats at Jamie, nudges her toward the kitchenette table. “I’ll finish dinner if you keep me company.”

Eagerly, Jamie rushes to obey. “To be safe, I think I might just not let you out of my sight again,” she says.

Dani turns back to the stove, reaches to fetch another wine glass from the shelf. Smiles. “Deal.”

**

Jamie drags a stool up to the counter to watch her cook. Chin propped in her cupped palm, she looked up at Dani adoringly, her whole body oriented toward her, socked feet tapping on the rungs.

The second steak was salvageable, and Dani leaves it marinating in the same brown butter and herbs it was basted in, heating a clean skillet to prepare the pan sauce under Jamie’s watchful eye.

She tops off Jamie’s glass as it does, then her own. Derailed, somewhat, by Jamie’s mouth on the lip of the wine glass, her quiet hum of pleasure as the wine touches her tongue.

“You’re being unfair,” Dani murmurs, turns back to the pan, begins to sweat the shallots, letting a few cloves of crushed garlic slide into the hot oil.

“Quiet,” Jamie says. Takes another sip, a little showy this time, catching on. “I’m learning.”

She cradles the glass languidly in her palm, twirls the stem as she watches Dani’s profile, studying her in that keen, fond way she does, even when Dani is doing something especially mundane – like folding laundry, or turning the pages of a book.

Dani peeks at her out of the corner of her eye. “You’re staring.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Jamie,” she says, a little chastising, a little pleased. “Stop it.”

She watches Jamie take another sip, the pulse of her throat, the perfect line of it, a bruise that might be a love bite hidden under the fall of her curls.

“I’m not doing anything.”

It’s definitely a hickey. Racking her brain, Dani thinks she can remember the moment from the day before, remembers Jamie, flush with some sort of shop-related victory, clambering on top of her on the living room floor. Scattering puzzle pieces and throw pillows to rub her face in Dani’s neck. Can remember how fast the tables turned once she got on top.

“You alright?” Jamie asks.

Dani realizes she has been clutching a little desperately at the beef stock for the past thirty seconds and jump starts her brain with a squeeze of the carton.

“Fine, just thinking.” She hopes, uselessly, that Jamie doesn’t call her on it. She should know better, really.

“About what?”

Glugging the carton into the pan, she deglazes with the stock and a healthy pour of red wine, produced from its hiding place behind the pasta.

“Just,” a flap of her hand, “the recipe.”

Jamie reaches from her perch, peels the bottle from Dani’s hand, and takes a long swig. She emerges from the throat of the bottle with a sideways smile and a curl of her fingers, beckoning.

“Come give me a kiss.”

“I’m cooking,” Dani says. “Just because you burn everything, doesn’t mean I have to.”

“Oh, cheeky,” Jamie crows, delighted. Anytime Dani bites back, she gets a look on her face, like she ordered a tuna sandwich and was delivered a four-course-meal. She reaches for her, a little pouty, abandoning her glass of wine to dedicate both hands to reeling Dani in. “Just a little kiss, Dani. What could it hurt?”

“My painstakingly prepared meal,” Dani mumbles, but lets herself drift within arm’s reach, finds herself corralled between Jamie’s knees, finds Jamie’s arms wrapping around her neck.

“Love me a little bit,” Jamie says, noses in until their lips are almost touching. Waits. “Just a little kiss.”

This close, Dani can’t say no, isn’t even sure if she has the resolve. She closes the gap, finds the taste of wine on Jamie’s tongue, lets her hands drop to her waist and cup, pull her close.

“I’m sorry again,” Jamie murmurs, catches her bottom lip in her teeth, bites down soft. Dani hums low in her throat, pressing close enough that the metal of Jamie’s belt buckle digs into her stomach.

“You’re forgiven,” Dani manages in between kisses. She turns her head to the side to catch her breath, leaving her neck vulnerable to Jamie’s mouth and teeth and, most troublesome, her tongue, licking a hot, wet line up the column of Dani’s throat.

“The sauce –”

“It’s fine,” Jamie says, drags her mouth to Dani’s chin-jaw-cheek, catches her lips in another kiss. Her hands clutch, move lower to palm roughly at Dani’s skirt.

“It’ll burn,” Dani gasps, slips her tongue in Jamie’s mouth anyway, feels an electric jolt in her stomach, the satisfaction of Jamie’s muted gasp.

“I’m not stopping you,” this said against her cheek, fingers deftly untucking her sweater to splay wide across the warm skin of her back.

Dani lets the kiss drag a moment longer, Jamie’s tongue stroking into her mouth until her body is buzzing in that tuning-fork pitch, Jamie’s touch setting her humming. With a groan, she wrenches away, untangles herself from Jamie’s legs and moves for the stove, a little sluggish.

She lowers the heat of the burner, scrapes the spoon through the reduction, pleased to find it hasn’t stuck to the bottom the way she worried it would. Jamie makes a loud noise of protest, reaching for her wine and draining it a long, steady draw, eyes still fixed on Dani.

Surfacing, she frowns. “No fair, Poppins.”

“Consider this your punishment,” Dani says absently, drops a hunk of butter into the pan, melting into a beaded, oil slick.

“Oh, yeah?” Jamie’s mouth turns up, a little impish. “How else are you going to punish me?”

“Oh my _God_.” Dani jerks her chin to face her, cheeks flushing. “ _Jamie._ ”

Both hands up in surrender, lips pinching. “Just a thought.”

Dani levels Jamie with her best scolding teacher face, lips pursed, brow furrowed, then – “Hey, wait.” Twists her hand around to her back. “Jamie, did you undo my bra?”

Leaning forward, Jamie tilts her head for a better look, hums, like she’s only just noticed. “Oh, yeah, maybe.” At Dani’s looks she splays her palms out, open, innocent. “Habit?”

Dani looks at her silently, long enough that Jamie’s smile crumples into a _shit-am-I-actually-in-trouble_ frown. She opens her mouth like she’s about to backpedal, and Dani holds up a hand to stop her.

Obediently, Jamie clicks her mouth shut. Dani turns off the stove.

“Are you really sorry?”

Jamie nods, forehead crinkling. Her feet hook over the rung of the stool, and she tilts forward, all doe-eyes and pretty, pink mouth – like she’s imploring Dani to touch. Dani knows, without thinking, that if she did something as simple as set her hand at the small of Jamie’s back, that Jamie would fold, pliant and wanting.

But that would be too easy, and she’s acutely aware of the wine now, of Jamie’s submission. 

Fingers slipped under the capped sleeves of her sweater, Dani drags down the straps of her bra one at a time, reaching under the hem to pull it free. She drops it to the kitchen floor, maintaining a slow, steady burn of eye contact.

Swallowing, Jamie tilts her chin up. Watches steadily, her only tell the rapid rise and fall of her chest, breath hiking.

“You really want to apologize?” Dani asks, absently shifts the cookbook off the counter, relocates the open bottles of wine to the table in the kitchenette.

Jamie’s white knuckles the lip of the stool, and she leans forward so far she’s liable to topple. “Yeah, I want to apologize.”

“And you’re sorry?”

“Yeah,” Jamie says. She digs her teeth into her bottom lip, drawing the cupid’s bow of her mouth taut. “You know I am.”

Dani creeps forward, powerful with the knowledge of Jamie’s desire, the story of it written plainly on her face, expression earnest and embarrassingly naked. “How sorry?”

“So sorry, baby.” A bit of a drawl now, voice pitched low. Looking for permission, she starts to get up slowly, permitted by an incline of Dani’s chin.

“Prove it.”

And, yeah, that’s definitely the wine talking. That she would ever be brave enough to challenge Jamie like this would have seemed almost inexplicable to her a matter of months ago. But here she is, knowing Jamie can see the weight of her chest through the thin cashmere of her sweater, knowing her breasts and the shape of her nipples are visible under the tight fabric, knowing exactly where Jamie is staring.

And Jamie tips the stool in her eagerness, reaches for her and catches her by the waist, pulls her into a deep kiss. She backs her into the counter until the lip of it digs into Dani’s skin, her back bowing under the full body press of Jamie against her.

Hands go straight to her chest over her sweater, groping a little sloppily – a little high school, a little tipsy, moaning like it’s the first time a girl’s ever let her be so bold. Those hands slide to her hips and then around, cupping under her thighs and encouraging her up onto the counter. Dani hops up easily, scattering a salt shaker and nearly thumping her head back into the cabinets.

Peeling up the hem of her sweater, Jamie adapts well to having her chest at eye level. She presses sloppy kisses to her stomach, moves up until she can teethe at the curve of Dani’s tits, licks out until Dani sighs, buries her hands in Jamie’s curls and holds her firm.

It had been a surprise to find that strong, swaggering Jamie, with her big boots and sure, cocky grin, goes loose and pliant under Dani’s firm touch – that she submits easily and gratefully, that there are few things she likes more than sinking to her knees, hands digging dimples into Dani’s thighs.

“Good,” Dani hisses, tips her head back hard enough that the dull thump against the cabinets reminds her of the solidity of her own body, of Jamie’s knees grinding into the linoleum, her mouth working between her legs.

Dinner is cooling on the counter, the sauce congealing in the pan, and Jamie is sighing happily, nudging closer, her cheeks wet against the inside of Dani’s thighs. Her own pleasure seems perversely visceral in the mundane sepia glow of the tiny kitchen, the tasteless mid-century art watching her throat mottle with an ecstatic blush, her hands tightening in Jamie’s hair, her hips rolling.

Dani hopes, abruptly and breathlessly, that Agnes’s ghost isn’t also here to watch them desecrate her kitchen counter. Then, expletives rolling off her tongue as Jamie does something particularly innovative, moves her fingers to join her tongue, she realizes she doesn’t really fucking care.

Until Jamie, the power of sex had never belonged to Dani before. It was, at best, an inconvenience and, at worst, an obligation. Sex meant the stick shift of Eddie’s car digging into her back in empty parking lots, meant turning her head to the side and bearing the world around her.

When he kissed her, she felt the gestures – the rough chafe of stubble, the press of his mouth, the heat of his breath – but they never seemed to reach her. The flickers of sensation rolled off her skin, a storm over the ocean, missing the shore completely. And, after, the guilt wrung her dry. 

But this, just the flicker of Jamie’s eyes to hers before they flutter shut, lashes dark against her cheek, her hands spreading her thighs, Dani is submerged.

**

Dani Clayton didn’t believe in ghosts before she came to Bly, but now her own body is as haunted as a Victorian landscape, a dark manor on the moor, some rooms shuttered even to her.

But before Bly, Dani didn’t believe in this either – that she would ever feel the full-body pleasure of another person curled into her side, bare legs tangled and covered by a knit throw, feeding her bites of steak from sauce-sticky fingers.

“This feels absolutely animal,” Dani says around a giggle.

Jamie shrugs. “No reason to waste it.” She watches Dani lick her thumb clean with narrowed eyes, waggles a finger, a little admonishing. “And this time, _I_ wasn’t the one who ruined dinner.”

“You played a very critical role,” Dani murmurs, and Jamie grins, a little pleased with herself. She shifts on the rug, trying to get comfortable, leans back into the couch.

“I like to think I played my part, yeah.” Turning her head, she drops a kiss on Dani’s bare shoulder. “How’d I do?”

Huffing a laugh, Dani offers her cheek for another kiss. “Five stars.”

They had retreated from the kitchen after Jamie began to complain of a leg cramp. The novelty of the kitchen counter wears off pretty fast, especially when any particularly creative maneuvers are likely to put something dangerously close to a hot burner.

Half-dressed and starting to shiver, skirt still hiked up to her waist, Dani had let Jamie tug her down onto the living room floor, finish what they started.

After, Jamie would put on a record, salvage what she could from the kitchen and rescue the half-drunk bottle of wine. It was still a good cut of meat, she insisted, marbled with fat and juice-dripping, and some people liked it better cold, anyway.

Now, the plate shucked somewhere under the coffee table, Dani rolls onto her back and drags Jamie with her. Drowsy, full of red wine and fine food, Jamie buries her head into the crook of Dani’s neck, leaves herself vulnerable to Dani’s naked, curious gaze.

Flush with the implicit permission to look, to explore, Dani trails a finger down Jamie’s arm, enamored with the smallest details – the dotting of freckles, the fine, soft hair on her arms, the tendons in her wrists that ripple when she closes her fingers gently around Dani’s wandering hand.

Eyes still closed, her words vibrating against Dani’s throat, she whispers, “good anniversary, then?”

“I think we salvaged it,” Dani whispers back, loathe to shatter the stillness of the room, the croon of the record and the impossibly light kiss dusted over her collarbone like an offering.

Despite the grind of the threadbare carpet against her back, the peace lulls her into the slow, syrup drift of near-sleep, but she stops her eyelids from drifting shut, wanting to continue her examination. She steals her hand from Jamie’s grasp to stroke lightly over the pink, raw divots where her clothes dug into skin – a band from the strap of her bra, the texture of her jeans leaving faint marks on her hips.

“I like living here with you so much,” Dani says. The honesty of her own voice a fragile thing, like an undressed windowpane, transparent in its nakedness.

She looks at the lines left behind from Jamie’s clothing, the fullness of her thighs and hips disguised by the drape of the afghan, teasing skin through its crocheted weave.

“I’ve never –” Dani starts, stops. Stalls, tries again. “– with anyone, before. Like, never –” She slips her hand under the blanket to stroke the plane of Jamie’s hip, draws a circle. “Y’know, never wanted to make someone dinner or come home to them or,” she pinches her eyes shut, “couldn’t wait to fuck them so we do it on the kitchen counter, instead.”

Jamie snorts, “And how was it?”

“Almost as good as kissing you,” Dani says, unthinking. She’s watching the shape of her hand through the thin blanket, but angles her chin to meet Jamie’s eyes when she feels her tense, finds her blinking up at her.

“Oh, yeah?” Jamie asks, a little dazed.

“Yeah.”

Tilting up, Jamie kisses her, slow. Lip to lip, the kind of kiss that drags on even after you pull away. Dani shivers.

“I can feel that in my entire body,” she says, a little dreamy. “Like you’re touching me all over.”

“You’re sleepy, baby,” Jamie says. She nuzzles in, “Talking crazy.”

She isn’t wrong – sprawled on the living room floor like cats in a sunbeam, the warmth of Jamie’s body, the smell of sex, the threat of the witching hour fast approaching, her eyelids are dragging closed, but – “I mean it,” she says, a little slurred now. “I can feel you everywhere.”

She loses Jamie’s reply to a foggy plunge into a deep, cotton sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> domesticity is eating ur gf out on the kitchen counter, quote me. come visit me on my tumblr [@nevervalentines](https://nevervalentines.tumblr.com/)


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